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Nov 15. 1877

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Chedworth

Remains discovered in 1866 & I think excavated then. There are steep banks round 3 sides of the place & the woman in charge speaks of a good deal of dirt being washed down in storms.

The walls have remarkably level tops, but they have been covered by little roofs of tiles to protect them so this does not go for much:

We first examined Room A which has a fine pavement of tesseræ over hypocaust, layer of concrete which roofs the cavity of the hypocaust is 8 in thick

His pavement is protected by a roof: no worms come through as far as we saw. The pavement is level except for some bulgings which correspond with the position of a big tree which grew in the middle of the pavement

The bath room B has a pavement over hypocaust: an old stump of a tree has been left growing on a low party wall to show the extent to which the remains were covered by soil. The vertical distance from the pavement to the bottom of the stump is 3'-4"

The room marked P has a pavement of tesseræ & is over hypocaust as proved by the wall flues. the pavement is not exposed, having been covered up with a layer of soil to protect it & is now grown over with turf. The pavement must have been destroyed in places as we came down on the pink concrete at once. In one such place the thickness of turf was 1 1/2" inches. A worm hole was found paving the level of their upper surface. Found a worm coiled up 3 1/2" below where the floor level seemed to be, this level had to be grassed, as the tesseræ were gone & the worm was in rotten concrete. There was no sag in this floor. Very few worm castings on the grass.

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At D is a hypocaust room which originally consisted of a floor supported on stone pillars arranged n rows. The flooring has all gone & the bottom on which the pillars rest is grass grown, & has worms now working in it. The woman says that the cavity of the hypocaust was empty when the remains were discovered: she says the rabbits get into the hypocausts.

In the present kitchen garden at about the pen & ink mark * is a Roman wall which the antiquarians think was the wall surrounding the villa garden. The upper surface of the wall is just below the present surface of the soil butt the line of the wall, is visible running for a few feet E & W. The wall is 13" thick & we found by digging that is only 8" deep. We dug down at the side of the wall into yellowish clay with lumps of oolite, & then scooped away the soil right under the wall. Found a large worm distinctly under the wall at a depth of 13 inches from the upper surface of the wall: also another worm at 12 inches deep under the wall. Found about this level and in the soil at the side of the wall a large beetle = = grub & a cockchafer apparently hibernating. A few inches deeper again, found 3 big worms in the soil at the side of the wall.

Dug another hole close by the side one of the partition walls of one of rooms near R. I think there must have been a floor as there was a ledge on the wall corresponding roughly to the level of a pavement next-door, but there were no tesseræ where we dug. We dug down 2' 6" from the level of the upper surface of the soil which rest on the ledge of the wall, but could not get to the foundation

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as there were hardly any worms it was not worth while going deeper.

There is a wall running along (about like the line S — S) on the very edge of the wood; the soil has been cleared away from the side of the wall nearest to the external wall of the rooms R &c, but the side nearest the wood has not been exposed & the soil on the top has evidently not been disturbed as hazel trees grow on it now. Moreover the men who dug for us said it not been disturbed much. There was about 5 inches of black mould with a few stones in it probably worm mould or leaf mould on the top of the wall. Digging down in the soil on the wood side found a bit of a pigs jaw & fragment of tile about 22" inches from the surface. This digging was continued down to the yellow clay & showed that there was a layer of 2' 2" of black mould full of stones (leaf mould?) above that clay.